Archive for June, 2010
Yes Folks, I’ve Got A Twitter
I’m really happy about the progress of the blog, and all of the positive feedback I’ve been getting. I’ve always been told that it can take that least eight months to a year for a blog to get off the ground. That’s why it’s been so surprising for me to see the kind of reaction [...]
Full StoryAdvantages and Disadvantages of Inline Deduplication
In a previous post, we’d gone over the advantages and disadvantages of inline vs. postprocess dedupliation. For those of you who haven’t already read the previous article, here’s all you need to remember: Inline deduplication occurs BEFORE the file is written Postprocess deduplication occurs AFTER the file is written The main advantage of the inline [...]
Full StoryWARNING: Don’t Use Disk For Archival or Long-Term Backup
Hard drive storage is great for most backup purposes. Not only is it cheaper than other media like DVD, but its read/write speeds make it the ideal solution for lightning fast recovery in a pinch. And it’s getting cheaper all the time. Also, it’s an extremely dense way to store data, which makes it ideal [...]
Full StoryWhat To Do With Leftover Equipment
One of the arguments against virtualization that I’ll sometimes hear has to do with the fact that the current infrastructure is a sunk cost. So the consolidation benefits of a virtualized environment would be off-set by having a bunch of dead server sitting around in storage. This is a poor excuse. An important part of [...]
Full StoryWhat’s The Difference Between Inline and Postprocess Deduplication?
It’s a common scenario that we’ve discussed before. IT Budgets are frozen or shrinking, and data growth is rising at a faster rate than storage prices are dropping. Simply throwing new hardware at this problem won’t make it go away. Instead, we need to be smarter about how we use and manage our data. In [...]
Full Story3 Ways of Thinking About Fault Tolerance
When it comes to the enterprise business continuity, the number of options can sometimes feel overwhelming. And one of the more confusing terms that gets tossed around is “fault-tolerance”. Fault tolerance means different things when used in different contexts. In order to simplify our understanding of the term, I’ll assume that most of the definitions [...]
Full StoryThe Problem Of Under-Utilized Servers
You can typically expect about 8:1 to 10:1 consolidation rate. This means that you can replace 8 different physical servers using just once box. At this rate, your server usage goes from around 5% to as much as 50% or 60%. Older datacenters are quickly becoming obsolete because they weren’t built around today’s technology requirements. [...]
Full StoryThe Advantages of Virtual Tape Libraries
The durability, low cost and high density of tape make it the ideal media for handling extremely large amounts of information. But tapes also come with one significant drawback: SPEED. Automated tape libraries help a bit by automating the task of finding and loading the right tape faster than a human could ever do it. [...]
Full StoryThe Only Way To Truly Maintain Uptime
In 2003, the entire north-eastern part of the United Sates, and much of Ontario, Canada had been hit with a massive blackout that knocked out some of the busiest datacenters in North America. Companies were reporting outages lasting for days, and causing millions in damages. If your company has mission-critical applications that needed to remain [...]
Full StoryVirtualization Datacenter Real-Estate Savings
Too often, we try to evaluate IT costs as a simple sum of hardware and software costs. But there’s actually much more to the total cost of ownership. First of all, there’s the real-estate costs associated with storing these systems. These days, it’s not uncommon for the average datacenter building costs to range as high [...]
Full Story5 Biggest Backup Problems Facing Companies Today
Companies are struggling to cope with the challenges of rapid data growth, combined with increased retention requirements for legal purposed. At the same time, increased uptime requirements are forcing IT departments to improve the speed and efficiency of regular maintenance. Current technology barely keeping up with the demand, and software/hardware companies are working hard to [...]
Full StoryProtecting Against Network Failures
High uptime requirements aren’t just for banks and hospitals anymore. These days, it’s increasingly common for even smaller companies to find themselves operating in a 24/7 business environment… serving customers all over the world. That’s why it’s now more important than ever for businesses to ensure they can minimize server downtime without letting IT costs [...]
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